Johannes Klackl

Threat and Defense: From Anxiety to Approach

Abstract The social psychological literature on threat and defense is fragmented. Groups of researchers have focused on distinct threats, such as mortality, uncertainty, uncontrollability, or meaninglessness, and have developed separate theoretical frameworks for explaining the observed reactions. In the current chapter, we attempt to integrate old and new research, proposing both a taxonomy of variation and a common motivational process underlying people’s reactions to threats. Following various kinds of threats, people often turn to abstract conceptions of reality—they invest more extremely in belief systems and worldviews, social identities, goals, and ideals. We suggest that there are common motivational processes that underlie the similar reactions to all of these diverse kinds of threats. We propose that (1) all of the threats present people with discrepancies that immediately activate basic neural processes related to anxiety. (2) Some categories of defenses are more proximal and symptom-focused, and result directly from anxious arousal and heightened attentional vigilance associated with anxious states. (3) Other kinds of defenses operate more distally and mute anxiety by activating approach-oriented states. (4) Depending on the salient dispositional and situational affordances, these distal, approach-oriented reactions vary in the extent to which they (a) resolve the original discrepancy or are merely palliative; (b) are concrete or abstract; (c) are personal or social. We present results from social neuroscience and standard social psychological experiments that converge on a general process model of threat and defense.

A dual-route perspective on poor reading in a regular orthography: An fMRI study

This study examined functional brain abnormalities in dyslexic German readers who – due to the regularity of German in the reading direction – do not exhibit the reading accuracy problem of English dyslexic readers, but suffer primarily from a reading speed problem. The in-scanner task required phonological lexical decisions (i.e., Does xxx sound like an existing word?) and presented familiar and unfamiliar letter strings of existing phonological words (e.g., Taxi-Taksi) together with nonwords (e.g., Tazi). Dyslexic readers exhibited the same response latency pattern (words < pseudohomophones < nonwords) as nonimpaired readers, but latencies to all item types were much prolonged. The imaging results were suggestive for a different neural organization of reading processes in dyslexic readers. Specifically, dyslexic readers, in response to lexical route processes, exhibited underactivation in a left ventral occipitotemporal (OT) region which presumably is engaged by visual-orthographic whole word recognition. This region was also insensitive to the increased visual-orthographic processing demands of the sublexical route. Reduced engagement in response to sublexical route processes was also found in a left inferior parietal region, presumably engaged by attentional processes, and in a left inferior frontal region, presumably engaged by phonological processes. In contrast to this reduced engagement of the optimal left hemisphere reading network (ventral OT, inferior parietal, inferior frontal), our dyslexic readers exhibited increased engagement of visual occipital regions and of regions presumably engaged by silent articulatory processes (premotor/motor cortex and subcortical caudate and putamen).

Resting-State and Task-Based Functional Brain Connectivity in Developmental Dyslexia

Reading requires the interaction between multiple cognitive processes situated in distant brain areas. This makes the study of functional brain connectivity highly relevant for understanding developmental dyslexia. We used seed-voxel correlation mapping to analyse connectivity in a left-hemispheric network for task-based and resting-state fMRI data. Our main finding was reduced connectivity in dyslexic readers between left posterior temporal areas (fusiform, inferior temporal, middle temporal, superior temporal) and the left inferior frontal gyrus. Reduced connectivity in these networks was consistently present for 2 reading-related tasks and for the resting state, showing a permanent disruption which is also present in the absence of explicit task demands and potential group differences in performance. Furthermore, we found that connectivity between multiple reading-related areas and areas of the default mode network, in particular the precuneus, was stronger in dyslexic compared with nonimpaired readers.

On the functional neuroanatomy of visual word processing: Effects of case and letter deviance

This functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasted case-deviant and letter-deviant forms with familiar forms of the same phonological words (e.g., TaXi and Taksi vs. Taxi) and found that both types of deviance led to increased activation in a left occipito-temporal region, corresponding to the visual word form area (VWFA). The sensitivity of the VWFA to both types of deviance may suggest that this region represents well-known visual words not only as sequences of abstract letter identities but also includes information on the typical case-format pattern of visual words. Case-deviant items, in addition, led to increased activation in a right occipito-temporal region and in a left occipital and a left posterior occipito-temporal region, which may reflect increased demands on letter processing posed by the case-deviant forms.

Existential neuroscience: neurophysiological correlates of proximal defenses against death-related thoughts

A great deal of evidence suggests that reminders of mortality increase in-group support and worldview defense, presumably in order to deal with the potential for anxiety that roots in the knowledge that death is inevitable. Interestingly, these effects are obtained solely when thoughts of death are not in the focus of consciousness. When conscious, death-related thoughts are usually defended against using proximal defenses, which entail distraction or suppression. The present study aimed at demonstrating neurophysiological correlates of proximal defenses. We focused on the late positive potential (LPP), which is thought to reflect an increased allocation of attention toward, and processing of, motivationally relevant stimuli. Our prediction was that the LPP should be increased for death-related relative to death-unrelated, but equally unpleasant stimulus words. In Experiment 1, this prediction was confirmed. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which used a target word detection task. In Experiment 2, both death-related and pleasant words elicited an enhanced LPP, presumably because during the less demanding task, people might have distracted themselves from the mortality reminders by focusing on pleasant words. To summarize, we were able to identify a plausible neurophysiological marker of proximal defenses in the form of an increased LPP to death-related words.

Top-down and bottom-up influences on the left ventral occipito-temporal cortex during visual word recognition: An analysis of effective connectivity

The functional role of the left ventral occipito‐temporal cortex (vOT) in visual word processing has been studied extensively. A prominent observation is higher activation for unfamiliar but pronounceable letter strings compared to regular words in this region. Some functional accounts have interpreted this finding as driven by top‐down influences (e.g., Dehaene and Cohen [ ]: Trends Cogn Sci 15:254–262; Price and Devlin [ ]: Trends Cogn Sci 15:246–253), while others have suggested a difference in bottom‐up processing (e.g., Glezer et al. [ ]: Neuron 62:199–204; Kronbichler et al. [ ]: J Cogn Neurosci 19:1584–1594). We used dynamic causal modeling for fMRI data to test bottom‐up and top‐down influences on the left vOT during visual processing of regular words and unfamiliar letter strings. Regular words (e.g., taxi) and unfamiliar letter strings of pseudohomophones (e.g., taksi) were presented in the context of a phonological lexical decision task (i.e., “Does the item sound like a word?”). We found no differences in top‐down signaling, but a strong increase in bottom‐up signaling from the occipital cortex to the left vOT for pseudohomophones compared to words. This finding can be linked to functional accounts which assume that the left vOT contains neurons tuned to complex orthographic features such as morphemes or words [e.g., Dehaene and Cohen [ ]: Trends Cogn Sci 15:254‐262; Kronbichler et al. [ ]: J Cogn Neurosci 19:1584–1594]: For words, bottom‐up signals converge onto a matching orthographic representation in the left vOT. For pseudohomophones, the propagated signals do not converge, but (partially) activate multiple orthographic word representations, reflected in increased effective connectivity. Hum Brain Mapp 35:1668–1680, 2014.

The Self-Liking Brain: A VBM Study on the Structural Substrate of Self-Esteem

Abundant evidence suggests that self-esteem is an important personality resource for emotion regulation in response to stressful experiences. It was thus hypothesized that the relative grey matter volume of brain regions involved in responding to and coping with stress is related to individual differences in trait self-esteem. Using structural magnetic resonance imaging of 48 healthy adults in conjunction with voxel-based morphometry and diffeomorphic anatomical registration using exponentiated lie algebra (VBM-DARTEL), positive associations between self-esteem and regional grey matter volume were indeed found in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), right lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), right hippocampus, and left hypothalamus. In addition, self-esteem positively covaried with grey matter volume in the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), which has been implicated in pride and theory of mind. The results suggest that persons with low self-esteem have reduced grey matter volume in brain regions that contribute to emotion/stress regulation, pride, and theory of mind. The findings provide novel neuroanatomical evidence for the view that self-esteem constitutes a vital coping resource.

Criticism hurts everybody, praise only some: common and specific neural responses to approving and disapproving social-evaluative videos

Social evaluation is a ubiquitous feature of daily interpersonal interactions and can produce strong positive or negative emotional reactions. While previous research has highlighted neural correlates of static or dynamic facial expressions, little is known about neural processing of more naturalistic social interaction simulations or the modulating role of inter-individual differences such as trait fear of negative/positive evaluation. The present fMRI study investigated neural activity of 37 (21 female) healthy participants while watching videos of posers expressing a range of positive, negative, and neutral statements tapping into several basic and social emotions. Unpleasantness ratings linearly increased in response to positive to neutral to negative videos whereas arousal ratings were elevated in both emotional video conditions. At the whole brain level, medial prefrontal and rostral anterior cingulate cortex activated strongly in both emotional conditions which may be attributed to the cognitive processing demands of responding to complex social evaluation. Region of interest analysis for basic emotion processing areas revealed enhanced amygdala activation in both emotional conditions, whereas anterior and posterior insula showed stronger activity during negative evaluations only. Individuals with high fear of positive evaluation were characterized by increased posterior insula activity during positive videos, suggesting heightened interoception. Taken together, these results replicate and extend studies that used facial expression stimuli and reveal neurobiological systems involved in processing of more complex social-evaluative videos. Results also point to vulnerability factors for social-interaction related psychopathologies.

Undesirable effects of threatening climate change information : A cross-cultural study

Why is the fight against climate change so challenging? Research suggests that climate change information may trigger symbolic defense strategies such as derogative outgroup behaviors (e.g., ethnocentrism) instead of direct attempts to address the problem itself (e.g., proenvironmental behavior). Ingroup affirmation may help decrease symbolic responses. We conducted a 2 (Affirmation: ingroup vs. no affirmation) × 2 (Message: threat vs. control) × 2 (Nation: Austria vs. Argentina) experiment (N = 243) to assess responses to climate change information (direct and symbolic) in participants from individualist and collectivist cultures. Participants responded with higher levels of ethnocentrism and a lower intention to engage in proenvironmental behavior after reading climate change information. This effect was significant in Austria. Using ingroup affirmation as an intervention tended to foster rather than reduce ethnocentrism. Thus, across cultures people resolve climate change threat in symbolic ways rather than by trying to address the problem itself.

Inhibition Underlies the Effect of High Need for Closure on Cultural Closed-Mindedness under Mortality Salience

The hypothesis that people respond to reminders of mortality with closed-minded, ethnocentric attitudes has received extensive empirical support, largely from research in the Terror Management Theory (TMT) tradition. However, the basic motivational and neural processes that underlie this effect remain largely hypothetical. According to recent neuropsychological theorizing, mortality salience (MS) effects on cultural closed-mindedness may be mediated by activity in the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), which leads to passive avoidance and decreased approach motivation. This should be especially true for people motivated to avoid unfamiliar and potentially threatening stimuli as reflected in a high need for closure (NFC). In two studies involving moderated mediation analyses, people high on trait NFC responded to MS with increased BIS activity (as indicated by EEG and the line bisection task), which is characteristic of inhibited approach motivation. BIS activity, in turn, predicted a reluctance to explore foreign cultures (Study 1) and generalized ethnocentric attitudes (Study 2). In a third study, inhibition was induced directly and caused an increase in ethnocentrism for people high on NFC. Moreover, the effect of the inhibition manipulation × NFC interaction on ethnocentrism was explained by increases in BIS-related affect (i.e., anxious inhibition) at high NFC. To our knowledge, this research is the first to establish an empirical link between very basic, neurally-instantiated inhibitory processes and rather complex, higher-order manifestations of intergroup negativity in response to MS. Our findings contribute to a fuller understanding of the cultural worldview defense phenomenon by illuminating the motivational underpinnings of cultural closed-mindedness in the wake of existential threat.